The Healing Power Of Emotional Support

Emotional support is a great relief when we feel alone or overwhelmed by emotions. It can provide us with comfort, security and tranquility. What aspects should we take into account if we want to give this emotional support to others? What if we want to welcome you from a friendly shoulder?

To support others, we will need to practice listening and empathizing with others. On the other hand, to receive emotional support we will have to assume that we are not always able to handle everything that happens on our own. Therefore, in some cases we will need help from other people.

The importance of active listening

The ability to actively listen is the basis for generating a space of understanding. Listening is not the same as listening ; when listening, we perceive with the whole body, with our ears, eyes, gestures, etc. The whole body is involved in listening so that the person who is speaking can feel that they are really being understood.

A good way to demonstrate active listening is to summarize and paraphrase what the person is saying as you progress through your speech. This will ensure that we are listening with full awareness and attention, without falling into distractions. It is very easy that, without realizing it, we end up talking prematurely, or give our opinion without having all the complete information, or what is worse, that we take our cell phone out of our pocket.

Feeling that we are connected with others can also provide us with this emotional support that goes so well when we feel overwhelmed by emotions. We need “our people”, to feel that we have someone interested in knowing our pains and joys because they care, someone who understands that we are complex beings, with complex thinking, and bears the cost of trying to understand us.

Empathy is a quality to learn

Empathy is the ability we have to put ourselves in the shoes of others and understand their feelings based on their circumstances. In this way, we can understand what happens, how they feel, what they think, and why people behave in a certain way. Empathy is a skill we can perfect if we put effort into taking the hands of others and making the effort to follow them through narrow doors and dark corners that often cause boredom or fear.

Let’s imagine that a friend explains to us that he has just broken up with his girlfriend and that he is affected by it. One of the keys for this friend to notice our support is to validate his feelings. Recognize that we understand that, in your situation, you feel this way. Thus we situate ourselves by valuing their emotions.

You don’t have to say a lot of words to offer support. In fact, it is often not necessary to say them: a hug, a look or a gesture can be enough for the person to feel accompanied. Acting as if nothing happened, that is, minimizing pain and suffering, does not usually help the other person. On the contrary, the caricaturization of their suffering is the opposite of what we should do. Maybe we wouldn’t have reacted like that, but that doesn’t make each other’s suffering any less sincere and profound.

Receiving emotional support alleviates suffering

Receiving the help and support we need to get through difficult times can bring us great relief and peace of mind. It’s important to recognize that we can’t face it all, as we can all go through moments of vulnerability. In these cases, it is possible that we need the support of someone we trust and a good outburst from time to time.

Sharing our emotions with others can help us strengthen our immune system and put us in a position to understand that we’re not the only ones with problems. We all go through difficult times at different times in our lives. Therefore, it is better to feel accompanied than having to go through these moments alone. Think that suffering already inspires introspection, but it is not good to accompany it with a feeling of total abandonment.

To provide emotional support we will need active listening, keeping silent and practicing empathy so that others will notice this support. On the other hand, receiving it will require a good deal of humility, recognizing that we are not capable of dealing with everything that happens to us, and starting to practice the ability to ask for help when we need it.